BenRiach 10 Years Old 2008 Single Cask 5807

By Barry Bradford on August 27, 2018 • ( Leave a comment )

BenRiach 10 Years Old 2008 Cask #5807 (59.7%, OB, Batch 15, Sauternes Barrique, 296 Bottles, 2018)

Category: Speyside single malt scotch whisky
Origin: BenRiach distillery
Bottling: Brown-Forman, BenRiach Single Cask Series Batch 15
ABV: 59.7%
Cost: £75

What they say

BenRiach holds some of the most experimental casks in Speyside, making it uniquely placed to offer a multi-faceted range of casks in both unpeated and Highland peated styles. Each year, Master Blender Rachel Barrie selects a number of distinct casks which celebrate the distillery’s creative distilling and maturation heritage. Batch 15 includes 17 casks: 11 unpeated and 6 Highland peated – an eclectic mix including port pipes, moscatel hogsheads, sauternes barriques, rum barrels and virgin oak. Each bottle is filled exclusively from one of these individual casks.

Official tasting notes:

Colour: Dark golden syrup.
Nose: A patisserie of honey-glazed apple and baked peach in crème caramel
Taste: Sweet honeyed peach with coconut cream developing into candy floss and apricot fruit tarts.

What I say

From BenRiach’s Batch 15 of their single cask series, this was distilled at Benriach distillery in 2008 and matured in an ex-Sauternes barrique for 10 years before bottling at Cask Strength of 59.7% ABV.

Thanks go to Spey: Progressive Communications and The BenRiach distillery for the official sample.

My tasting notes:

Appearance: Dark copper gold (11/20), slow-forming. medium-fine tears leave fine legs.
Nose: Fruit, honey, spice and cereal; apple, pear and peach fruits, drizzled in honey and spiced with white pepper and cinnamon frosting, relaxes into soft caramel, toffee and biscuit malt there is a sharpness of fresh red grapefruits too.
Taste: Intense, syrupy fruit preserves, orchard and a little berry/woodland too, plum, damson and blackcurrant add depth and a little earthiness to the apple/pear/peach combination, very sweet thoughout, warming spirit but very full-bodied and thick on the palate a hint of eucalyptus or wintergreen oil.
Finish: Medium, tarte tatin, apricot slice pastries, peach cobbler even, sweet & mentholic spearmint.

Overall

A delicious fruit-packed dram with a syrup-like sweetness redolent of the Sauternes wine itself, there is a little unusual spiced and oily menthol in places but it is easily forgivable. Plus any mentholic notes are mostly fleeting or lost anyway such is the power of the fruity and malty flavours here. A great example of spirit and cask pairing that highlights all the right influences.